


to sing the beloved

by parrishes



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-06-04 21:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15156320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parrishes/pseuds/parrishes
Summary: Shinji and Asuka, after the end.





	1. Chapter 1

_Who, if I screamed out, would hear me among the hierarchies_  
_of angels? And if one did suddenly take_  
_me to his heart: I would perish from his_  
_stronger existence. For beauty is nothing_  
_but the onset of terror we're still just able to bear,_  
_and we admire it so because it calmly disdains_  
_to destroy us. **Every angel is terrifying** **.**_

\- Rainer Maria Rilke, "First Elegy" from the  _Duino Elegies_

* * *

 The sea laps at their feet. The feeling would be soothing, except for the fact that the sea is not really a sea, but rather a graveyard spanning the entirety of the earth. 

Asuka and Shinji take themselves to the beach every dusk, to where they've driven a post to mark the limit of high tide. Together they sit in heavy, loaded silence - Asuka with her mouth thinned in disgust, Shinji with his shoulders bowed in shame. They watch for any sign of the liquid receding, even if it is merely a centimeter, but they know they shouldn't look too closely because it's not even a real sea. It's not even water. 

They've known each other down to the atom, and beyond that too, gone farther and further in their joining than perhaps anyone should. But they're stuck together now - Shinji and Asuka, both terrified of the enormity of their loneliness, companions in an unfamiliar new world. 

They both came back. Whether or not anyone else has too, they still don't know. The red sea still looks the same. 

But there's no time to grieve, not when there is still blood streaking across the moon. No time, when as they stand on the warm sand, Asuka tells him again that she feels sick. 

"I know," Shinji tells her, although he isn't sure what else to say. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to be better." 

"No, stupid," Asuka spits. "I really mean it. It isn't about you. I mean I really feel sick." 

"I get it, and I'm sorry; I don't know what I can do-"

"I'm gonna barf," she interjects, and before Shinji can blink she's leaned forward and vomited up her share of some of the rations they've managed to salvage from the ruins. Chunks of dehydrated meat now float in the sea of LCL. 

Shinji puts his face in his hands.  _Great._   

* * *

They continue to salvage what they can. Asuka hunts, sometimes, with a rifle that she found, but her expeditions become increasingly limited by whatever sickness unceasingly gnaws at her, day in and day out. She begins to eat less and less in an attempt to stave off the nausea, her figure hollowing out, her cheekbones carved against her sinking cheeks. 

One morning she refuses to get up. She refuses to eat although Shinji decides to make the cereal they had been saving (in the hope that there was ever something, anything, to celebrate), and for many long and heartrending moments Shinji is terrified that Asuka came back from nothingness only for him to lose her all over again. 

He manages to make her eat a few spoonfuls before she vomits it, coughing and sobbing, turning her back on him. He understands, and leaves her to her own devices while he tends to what daily tasks he can. When returns to what they call home at dusk, Asuka is at least sitting up. 

"I did what I could," he tells her, although she hasn't said anything. "But I also found some ginger tea in one of the kitchens. Maybe it will help." Asuka still doesn't say anything, but looks at him. "You want some?" he asks her, and she nods. 

He makes the tea. He sets aside some crackers for Asuka, in case she's feeling brave. He hands her a steaming cup - boiled rainwater, boiled again into tea - and eats his own rations. Lucky for him (and everything in her immediate vicinity), she manages to keep the tea down, and it marks the first time she's managed to keep  _anything_ at all down in days. 

"Thank you," she says, so quiet that he almost can't hear her over the chirping of the cicadas, and the cooing of a bird he thinks may be a loon. 

"What?"

"Don't make me say it again," she grumbles. "I said 'thank you.' For the tea." She takes a moment, then grudgingly whispers: "It made me feel better." 

Shinji, despite himself, is cheered by this. "Then I'll look for more. You can too, when you're feeling well enough again." 

Asuka makes a noise of agreement, but says nothing else. Shinji considers her recent quietness to be a symptom of her ailment, one even more disturbing than her constant nausea. Asuka has been sick for weeks on end, and the symptoms show no sign of abating. Soon, he thinks, she will stop talking entirely, and he'll be left to care for a silent girl as she wastes even further away. And then... then, he will be, truly, entirely alone. 

He won't let it happen. He mustn't run away. But where would he run to? There is no place left to hide. 

* * *

 He is wrong. The symptoms do abate. It takes time: a few more weeks, perhaps another month, but eventually they subside. They don't disappear entirely, but Asuka is at least able to stand and move. 

Soon she feels well enough to rejoin him on their nightly visits to the beach. On this trip, her first time back, she stares at the moon for a long time, and a look of shock, anger, and realization passes over her face. She abruptly turns away and runs off, and Shinji is left stunned for a good ten seconds before he chases after her. 

He grabs her at the shoulder when he catches up to her, only to be abruptly pushed away. This makes him angry and he grabs her again, forces her to look him in the eye, and he stunned to see that she is crying.  

"Stop," she snarls in between sobs. "Go away. Leave me alone!" 

Shinji is beyond confused, but he doesn't let her go. 

"I said leave! Go!" She pushes at him, raises her hand to claw his face, and that's when he loses his patience and throws her to the ground. 

He straddles her, takes both her wrists in his hands, and she is not yet strong enough to continue fighting him. Eventually she goes limp, except for when she shakes with sobbing. 

"What  _is_ it with you?" he asks her, and the venom in her glare almost makes him regret his tone. Almost.

Asuka takes advantage of the lull to push herself upright. "Fuck you," she hisses, her voice still thick, then tries to get up. He doesn't let her. 

"Asuka, come on. What is it?" As he expected, she says nothing. It's probably her way of punishing him. He shakes her a little in retaliation. "Asuka. What's going on? Asuka! Answer me!" 

She flops back down onto the ground irritably and turns her face away from his. "The moon," she mutters. 

"The moon?" 

"I realized something," she whispers. "Three moon cycles. Eighty-four days." 

"... I don't understand." He feels like he's missing something obvious. 

"Three cycles, eighty-four days..." she continues, "... and no period. I've never missed one before, not ever. It all makes sense. My period not coming, the sickness..." Asuka takes a breath, and it hitches in her throat. "I'm pregnant. That has to be what it is." 

Shinji is dumbstruck. He gives voice to the only thought he has: "How?" 

"I don't fucking know, Shinji! That's the fucking point!" 

Neither acknowledge the second, unspoken question:  _Who?_

"I don't-" 

"I have to get rid of it," Asuka mutters, more to herself than him. "I can't do this. It has to be gone. I have to get rid of it." 

"How would you do it?" he asks her. There a maliciousness to her whispering, to its tone, and it sets him on edge. 

"I'll go to the hospital, look for drugs, try to induce a miscarriage..." 

"It's totally ruined," he reminds her. "We looked there first. We already took everything that was usable." There wasn't much, mostly bandages, ointments, wound care, little things the assault on headquarters hadn't destroyed. He had wanted to use some of the precious medicine they  _had_ managed to save during Asuka's period of illness, but she consistently refused it. Smart of her, considering this new development. 

"I will use a fucking  _coat hanger_ if that's what it takes," she tells him, and some hidden resolve inside him stiffens at the thought of the wire making its way between her thighs, inside her, and further...

"No," he says. "Not that. I'll help, if you need me to - I'll hit you, I'll push you down the stairs, I'll do whatever you want me to - but don't do that."

"I don't fucking care how, as long as it's gone," Asuka says, but she sounds a little unsure as Shinji slowly, hesitantly places his hand on her lower abdomen. It's firmer than it used to be, and it's not just her weight loss, it's not just muscle - something behind her abdominal wall has hardened, swelled. There's a new seed there, waiting to sprout, a new life... maybe. It's up to her. 

"It needs to go," she repeats, but the uncertainty is still there. Like the two of them, it also hides itself away.   

* * *

Asuka estimates that she is likely around four months along ("because the nausea is better," she says), probably a little more, but she had so much on her plate that she hadn't paid much attention to the absence of her menstruation. 

Shinji waits to see if she'll tell him, out of the blue one day, that she's gotten rid of it. So far she hasn't yet: either she's changed her mind, or is too frightened to go through with it. It might be a mixture of both, but Shinji isn't about to ask her. 

He can't be honest with her: he doesn't want her to do it. It will be one more person on the earth, one more person to ease the loneliness he still feels. It is better, that is true, but he would rather he not feel lonely - even though Asuka sleeps next to him in the darkness and has every night since her return - at all. 

But another three months pass, and Asuka's belly continues to grow. The first Shinji sees it, really  _sees_ it, he can't contain his surprise. He must look incredulous, like an idiot, because Asuka mutters that he's stupid with his mouth hanging open like that before they cross another location, where they've scavenged, off the proverbial map. 

At dusk they walk down to the beach, all three of them, Shinji and Asuka and her belly. They watch the orange sea gently pushing in and out, when Asuka notices the LCL is not reaching the post. 

"Look," she says. "It's not coming up as far as it used to. Did the pole move?" 

"I doubt it," Shinji replies. "Maybe others have come back." Wherever those others may or may not be, it's clear to both Shinji and Asuka that their island still remains devoid of any other lives but theirs, and the child's. 

After yet another heavy silence, Asuka mutters, "Well, it's not like standing here will make anyone else come walking up. We should go." They do. 

Later in the night, when Asuka's back is pressed flush against his chest and he has his hand on the bulge of her belly, he asks her: "What do you want it to be? The kid?" 

"Boy," she says, after a pause. "They might not be so bad if you can raise one yourself, do it the right way." Shinji snorts, rustling Asuka's hair, not thinking to wonder why she doesn't want a daughter, and they fall asleep not thinking of the bloody moon outside. 

* * *

The next month is spent in a frenzy. Asuka and Shinji prepare as much as they can for the child, but Shinji feels like they'll never be truly ready. Not when the world is eerily silent save the sounds of animals, and the sea is not blue but orange. 

As her time grows nearer, Asuka becomes more and more volatile, truly a feat all things considering. But it's not at Shinji that she grows angry: she is tired, unable to move as she used to, unhappy with the physical changes pregnancy has wrought on her body. She begins to sleep apart from him, and when he touches her she flinches, turns her face away in what is probably shame or embarrassment or a little bit of both. 

He hears her crying one night, when she thinks she's alone. He hears her cry about how she never wanted children, was terrified of them, didn't understand them. He hears her cry about how she doesn't understand, over the mystery of how she rematerialized from LCL pregnant. He hears her cry about how, if she had known what to expect, she would have stayed in the sea. He hears her pain and her fear and he hurts right along with her,  _because_ she is hurting.  

Shinji wants to help her, but she won't let herself be vulnerable in front of him. Asuka wants him to comfort her, tell her it's going to be all right in the end, but they're well past the end of everything now, and she knows that Shinji is a terrible liar. 

* * *

The pains start at dawn.

Asuka is lying next to him, apart from him, when she bolts upright with a hoarse cry and Shinji feels the bed become damp. 

The sheets are not stained orange. The liquid on Asuka's thighs is clear, and she hisses as a strong contraction ripples through her body. 

"I guess this is it, then," Shinji says as Asuka grits her teeth. "I'll go get the stuff. You'll be okay for a little bit? It's still early." 

"Just hurry, idiot," she tells him, then groans. "Fuck, this hurts." Because Shinji cannot deliver the child for her, he does what she says. It's the only way that he can help her, really help. She needs him, now more than ever. 

He consults the manual, an LCL-stained book they found in the ruins of a nearby house. It's called  _What to Do: 100 Different Emergencies_ , and luckily for them, childbirth is in there. 

He finds sterile gloves and sanitary pads. He boils shoelaces in water, to sanitize them. He washes his hands, then sanitizes their sharpest pair of scissors with one of their limited supply of alcohol wipes. He finds the towels that he had washed in boiling water and set aside for this very moment. He hopes that they're still clean enough, because he doesn't think he has enough time to wash them again.

He returns to the bedroom where Asuka is lying, clutching the fitted sheet with white-knuckled hands and one wide, frightened eye. 

"I thought I said to hurry," she pants as Shinji removes the topsheet from the bed, leaving her exposed. 

"I got everything ready," he replies, gesturing to the open door. "It's all waiting." The supplies are waiting, and so are they. 

And  _god_ , do they wait. 

They wait for hours, as Asuka is ravaged by the intensity of her labor while Shinji, hesitantly and apologetically, checks her dilation and tells that it is ( _still_ ) not yet time to push. 

Asuka collapses back onto the mattress. "How long can it possibly take?" she asks, tossing her head and writhing when the next contraction hits. She screams when it washes over her, more from frustration than her actual pain. 

Shinji ducks his head to check. "You're still at seven." They don't have a plan for what to do if Asuka's labor stalls. According to the book, there are two options: emergency Cesarean, or both Asuka and the child die. 

But the book does not know that Asuka and Shinji are children themselves, and that they have no reason to know, or care, that first labors usually take the longest. It is well into night, almost midnight, and Asuka has been laboring since sunrise. 

In another hour and a half, he checks. "Eight." Another hour. "Nine." Forty-five minutes: "Ten." He straightens and says, "I think you can start pushing now. Let me check the book." 

"Finally," Asuka groans under her breath as Shinji nods. 

"Ten centimeters." He exhales. "It's time." 

Another hour and a half passes, full of Asuka's muffled curses and shrieks as she pushes under Shinji's guidance. She vomits a few times, but they both ignore it as the crown of the child's head emerges. 

"You're almost there," he tells her, trying to be encouraging. "You're so close. A few more pushes, and that's it. It'll all be over soon." Asuka says nothing in response, but he thinks he hears her sob. "One more," he says. "Come on. That's it," as Asuka, exhausted and terrified, in tears, bears down. "Okay... one more, a big one, that's it. Come on. You can do it. Come on." 

Asuka, choking on her cries, gathers her strength for one last push, and then it's over. 

Shinji holds the baby in his hands. He sees two arms, two legs, two hands, two feet, one head with a little fuzz of dark hair. The child is squalling loudly, but Shinji still frantically looks for the plastic bulb he sanitized earlier and cleans out its mouth and nose anyway. He dries it off, wraps it in a clean towel and runs to get the shoelaces and scissors. 

"What is it?" Asuka asks, her voice barely a whisper. "What is it?"

He checks as he's tying off the cord. "A girl," he says, and as he looks at the baby he's suddenly sure - almost more certain than he's ever been of anything, actually - that this child is his. 

This little girl is the culmination of every single feeling that has ever passed between him and Asuka - their fighting, their hatred, their shared trauma, their admiration, their envy, their attraction, the love that deep down must be there - formed from the meeting and combining of their essences, their undisguised selves, in the cosmic pool. 

He's not going to tell her that, though. Not now, not when she's so frightened. 

But Asuka whispers, "No," frantic and terrified, her mind filled with images of death and baby dolls and feet spinning from left to right, and suddenly she reaches for the scissors and Shinji sees what's going to happen before it does. He grabs her wrist and twists it until the scissors drop, but she struggles and he has no choice - he punches her in the face and she drops back as he cuts the cord and scoops the baby into his arms. 

"What the  _fuck_ is  _wrong_ with you?" he asks (he knows, but he doesn't care), cradling the crying newborn, and for a moment he regrets it but then realizes he needs to hold his ground, not for himself but for the baby girl in his arms. 

Asuka clasps her hands to her mouth, her good eye wide and horrified, and her sobs ring out anew. She cries all through the afterbirth and as soon as it's over she tells Shinji to take the girl. "Take her, please," she asks through her tears. "Keep her away from me. For now. For her sake." 

He doesn't say that the baby will probably need to eat soon. He doesn't say that he's disappointed in her, because he is. He doesn't say that she's afraid of repeating the past (and so is he) and that he's never known her to be a coward, doesn't say that he didn't fall in love with a girl who was afraid. 

Shinji doesn't say any of those things. Instead he makes sure that Asuka is okay as she can possibly be, then he takes the child and closes the door, leaving the crying girl on the other side alone with herself.

* * *

 He lets Asuka sleep for a few hours, until the infant's crying doesn't stop and he's sure it has nothing to do with her diaper. 

Asuka wakes to the sight of Shinji standing by the bedside, the child in his arms. 

"I think she's hungry," he says, but his brow is furrowed. Asuka nods, weakly, and holds out her arms, but Shinji makes no move to give her the baby. 

"I thought you wanted me to feed her?" she asks. 

Shinji looks back at the scissors on the the table outside. "I'm not leaving you alone with her," he says, and Asuka nods again. Fair is fair. He sits on the small bedside table as Asuka removes her shirt and holds the child to her breast. The baby takes to feeding easily, much to their relief, and as she eats both Shinji and Asuka take the opportunity to study the little girl. 

Ten fingers, ten toes. Two eyes, two ears, one mouth, one nose. Shinji is relieved. Physically, there's nothing wrong with her. Physically she's perfect. But who will she grow up to be? Suddenly he's painfully aware of all the responsibilities: not just taking care of the child's physical needs, keeping her safe, but ensuring that she grows up to be a good person, that she grows up at all. She's so small, so frail, so helpless, entirely dependent on the two of them. He's terrified of hurting her. 

Droplets fall on the baby's head. Asuka weeps and apologizes to the child in a whisper, over and over again. Shinji watches both Asuka and the baby, Asuka in her regret and guilt and shame, the little one unbothered by her mother's tears falling on her little face. 

That little girl will have her own reasons to cry, one day. Maybe she'll have her own reasons to be happy, too. What will make her cry and make her smile will, to some extent, be up to her _and_ up to them. The shaping of a child's identity rests entirely in their ill-prepared hands, and for a brief moment, Shinji wants to run. 

* * *

Asuka lets him name the baby. "As long as it's not Rei or Yui," she says, then, softer, "... or Kyoko." 

A new name for a new life in a new world. He gets it. The past has no place here, can't do anything for them, so naturally he goes for one of the most ancient names in the (good) book. 

He names the baby Eve. Asuka snorts at that. "Humanity fell because of Eve," she reminds him, and Shinji retorts that's not like they can really go any lower. 

Lilith is clearly out, as a name. Eve is not a boy, so the name Adam is out as well, by default (and no one utters _Kaworu_ either). And the Evas, after all, helped get them to this point - Eve owes her existence to the Angels, to the Evangelions. Shinji thinks the tribute is fitting. Asuka ultimately agrees, even if she finds it a bit trite. 

Shinji, to his own surprise, is enchanted with the little girl, the one person who needs him unconditionally. Knowing that Asuka is likely resentful, despite herself, of the attention he gives little Eve, during his few moments of spare time he takes the baby to wherever Asuka is and plays with her there. He hopes it will mollify Asuka somewhat, him coming to her, and maybe make her more at ease with the fact that she's someone's mother now. Maybe watching him be happy with Eve will make her less distant toward the girl. 

To her credit, Asuka is far better than she was during Eve's birth. Shinji still won't leave her alone with her daughter, but she hasn't made any further aggressive overtures towards Eve, not since that long, long night, full of tears and the bitter taste of blood and salt. But, even after everything, Asuka is still awkward around Eve, looks at her curiously, like she doesn't quite know what to think of her. 

One night, after dinner, Shinji is sorting laundry into piles when Asuka looks up from feeding Eve and says, with a resigned sigh, "I don't understand her." 

Shinji is confused by her words. "She's a baby. Of course you don't understand her. No one does. She doesn't even understand herself yet." 

"No, dummy," she whispers. "It's more than that. I don't... I don't know where she came from, or how she got here. She's mine, but she doesn't  _feel_ like mine. I think I'd understand her better if... if I knew how. If I knew who, and why. I think I would feel closer to her then." A pause. "I don't know her, but at the same time I don't want to hurt her. I don't want her to hurt the way I did. I've never felt that way before, not for anyone - I didn't care if most other people were in pain, or struggling, but with her... I want her to be happy. Somebody should be."  

Shinji is well aware of what danger staying silent too long poses. On one hand, if he tells Asuka what he believes, but can't conclusively prove - that Eve is his child too, that their feelings for each other created her while they were still in Instrumentality - then she would probably hate him forever, but at least he'd be being as truthful as he can. On the other, he could leave her in the dark, confused, alienated from her daughter (and he _knows_ both she and Eve deserve better than that) but she would likely stay. With him. 

Asuka is being so open, so vulnerable, so honest with him. He needs to meet her halfway. He knows that now. 

He takes a middle option: "Why can't she be mine?" 

Asuka looks at him, startled. "What are you saying?" 

"I'm offering," he tells her. "I'll help you. I'll help you raise her. You gave her to me when she was first born, remember?" Eve is six months old now, holding up her head, occasionally babbling like she doesn't have a care in the world, which she doesn't yet. She looks like a tiny, dark-haired, innocent Asuka, an Asuka not touched by suicide and neglect and Angels, and Shinji is all the gladder for it. 

"You're sure?" she asks. When he nods, she asks again. "Why?" 

"Because she's yours," Shinji answers, and for once he's being openly, unashamedly, unabashedly honest with her - for once he isn't scared of his truthfulness, and it feels so freeing that his heart twinges a little. The fact that Eve _may_ be his is irrelevant at the moment, because she  _is_ Asuka's child and even though her origins may be ambiguous, he loves her (would inevitably love her) because he loves her mother. And when Eve grows older, who knows? Maybe - hopefully - he'll love Eve for who she is, for who she grows to be, for who she  _could_ grow to be, for her smile or her laugh or... 

There are a thousand different versions of Shinji, and all those versions of him love all those versions of Asuka, and all the possibilities of Eve. 

He loves Asuka, because she makes him want to be stronger, better. He loves Eve, because even if she isn't his, she is still Asuka's daughter and he loves Asuka. He wants to be a better father to Eve than Gendo Ikari was to him, wants Asuka to be a better mother to Eve than Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu was to her. He wants Asuka to _want_ to be better, for herself and for her daughter. 

At the end of this day, like it was at the end of all days, he loves them both. That's all he needs to know. 

"Thank you," Asuka says, tears thick in her eyes. Swallowing a little, wiping them away, she laughs. "God, that's embarrassing. I'm crying so often now. It's these damn postpartum hormones, I'm sure of it." 

"It's because we have nothing left to hide from each other," Shinji responds, and it's true - they've come a long, long way in a little over a year (for Asuka, anyway), from his hands circling her throat during the Third Impact, on the beach, a long way from scissors in Asuka's hands. Neither of them have the time or the energy to judge each other anymore, not when their island is blighted and sterile and Eve still wakes them up in the night with her crying. Not when she still needs them, not when they still need each other. 

No time, no energy, not when it's still just the three of them in this desolate new world.  

Eve coos, suddenly, the sound almost eerie, like a loon call that's been pitched down. She shakes her little hands and feet and stares up at Asuka with a smile. 

"Okay," Asuka says, after yet another pause, looking down at Eve. She chuckles. "Okay, mädchen. You win." 

Eve coos and shakes her hands again, done with feeding, and Shinji hands Asuka a towel as she puts Eve on her shoulder to burp her. 

"I think we might be able to stop burping her soon," Shinji says. "She was sitting up yesterday and did it on her own. You should have heard it. I thought the place was gonna blow." 

"Good for her, but..." Asuka winces as Eve's spit-up flows down her back. "Maybe not yet." Shinji holds his hand out for the dirty towel, and places it in one of the many piles of laundry. Asuka gives Eve to him before she goes to change her shirt, and as she leaves Shinji asks her yet another question. 

"Do you regret it?" The definitions of "it" are myriad. She could answer all of them, one of them, or none of them at all. 

Asuka pauses in the doorway. "I can't now," she says at last, then vanishes through the threshold before Shinji can ask her what she means by that. He thinks he sees the ends of her hair still floating in the emptiness after she disappears, a fringe of ghosts.

* * *

Shinji cleans Eve up after they finish dinner while Asuka puts away their few dishes in their small apartment, in a building left barely unscathed by the Third Impact, on the southern outskirts of the ruins of of Tokyo-3. They switch off on childcare, usually, Shinji no longer as apprehensive as he once was about leaving Asuka alone with Eve, who is happy, healthy, and trying her damnedest to walk unassisted at ten months old. 

Asuka reaches up to put away the last plate, when Shinji, having put Eve down for the night, lifts it away and easily sets it on the top shelf.

"Thanks," she says, a little uncomfortable. She's looking  _up_ at him, and it's completely bizarre. "You've grown. A lot, I think."  _And not just physically. We both have._  

"Have I?" Shinji says. "We've had a lot going on. I haven't really noticed, aside from my clothes not fitting. I thought they were just old." When his clothes were far too small for even his own comfort, he found a pair of jeans and a shirt on the ground that looked like they fit him, left over from someone still dissolved, and that was the end of that. 

"They  _were_ old," Asuka retorts. "I'm glad you're wearing something that fits, at least." She takes a second, but she remembers something else. "And don't tell me you didn't notice you were growing. Your knees killed you every night for months, and now we know why." 

Shinji makes a noise of assent and moves on to helping Asuka finish with the dishes. He leans over her to put a bowl away, and for a moment Asuka is almost flustered by his closeness. 

She regards him curiously when he walks away, eyes him up and down when he brings Eve, very displeased at being left on her own, to Asuka to say goodnight. Eve squirms in Shinji's grip, eager to be given to her mother, and she buries her head in the space between Asuka's neck and shoulder when she's finally in her mother's arms. 

"Gute nacht, tochter," Asuka whispers. "Schlaf gute." She stokes Eve's hair, but the child whimpers when Asuka moves to hand her back to Shinji. 

"Why don't you put her to bed?" he suggests. Eve's lower lip is stuck out and trembling, her arms holding her fast to her mother. Seeing a meltdown imminent on the horizon, Asuka agrees and takes Eve to her room, which is little bigger than a closet. She strokes Eve's head again and the little girl curls against Asuka's hip before she falls asleep. 

"Gute nact, Liebling," she says, and suddenly she feels such an overwhelming rush of contentment at the sight of Eve's peaceful, sleeping face that she frowns, because it's so unexpected, so unfamiliar. When she looks up, Shinji is there, and his eyes are soft like spring as he looks at her. She gets up quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child, then rushes right past him, determinedly avoiding his gaze. His head briefly follows her as she exits, but he stays where he is, watching Eve dream. 

* * *

"Shinji." He doesn't answer her, so Asuka tries again. "Shinji. Listen to me. We can't stay here much longer." 

He raises his head from where he's bent over almost double, holding Eve's hands as she clumsily toddles around. "You mentioned that last night."

"We're going to run out of food in a month or two, and that's if you and I stick to the rationing schedule. And I can't keep on nursing Eve forever. She already needs more variety in her nutrients than what she's getting. _And_ she has teeth now. We have to leave." 

"You're right," he says with a sigh. "As usual. We can take what we have and move on. But what if... what if somebody comes back? How will they know that there's someone else here?" 

"The graveyard," Asuka states. "It's right near the beach, I'm sure someone will find it. We can leave a note there, seal it up, cover it in plastic, put it under rocks so it doesn't get blown away. But we have to decide where we're going first."  

"What if they don't reappear where we did?" Asuka gives him a look that clearly asks him if he has a better idea. Unfortunately, he does not, so he moves on. "Okay. Where do you think we should go?" 

"South of Tokyo-3," she says. "Somewhere on the coast of Shizuoka, maybe." 

Shinji has a fond memory from childhood, one where he sits with his sensei, enraptured at a cellist playing Bach's _Cello Suite No.1 in G Major_ in a large, almost-empty concert hall. "How about Hamamatsu? Or around there?"

"Fine by me," Asuka says. "But we need to leave soon. We'll need to start finding food as soon as we get there." 

"Okay, but..." Shinji squints. " _How_ , exactly, are we going to get there?" 

"I," Asuka grins, "will be more than glad to teach you how to hotwire a car." 

Shinji supposes he shouldn't be surprised. "You know how to do that?"

"Silly, _everyone_ in Germany knows how to hotwire a car." He isn't sure if she's kidding, but Asuka continues. "Now, I saw a few cars in that gas station parking lot, the one west of here. One of them looked older. We'll use that one." 

"Do we want an older car? Will it be reliable enough?" 

"Newer models have alarm systems in place, so if you do it wrong you lock the steering wheel and then you won't be going anywhere. With an older car, brute force can usually break the wheel for you. Or there's a spring you can pop. It just depends."

"Did trial and error teach you all this?" 

"Don't ask." She glares at him, but softly, and leans down when Eve, still attached to Shinji with one hand, gives her a twig. "It's a nice stick- oh, that's a bug. Eve!" The baby giggles.

"We should start packing," he says. "We should leave anything that we don't need behind." 

* * *

It takes them most of two days to get ready. They leave behind much of the cookware, pots and pans and dishes, the rain barrel, expecting to be able to find some in Hamamatsu.  

They take their food and water and medicine, and the blankets, and their perishable supplies. They take anything they think Eve might need. Shinji takes a trip to see if anything is salvageable from Kaji's watermelon patch, but has no luck here. He does manage to find some wild berries on the way back and picks them for the road. 

The next day, Shinji packs up their flat while Asuka heads out to hotwire the car. She returns some hours later, victorious as she pulls up to the building, honking wildly, and she startles Shinji into dropping a cup and Eve into frightened tears. It's an ancient machine, probably older than both Asuka and Shinji combined, but Asuka states she had no trouble getting it to work. It has a full tank of gas and four decent tires (and a spare Asuka decided to take off one of the other cars in the lot), but Shinji still looks surprised as if it's a dinosaur, one that had suddenly started moving after millennia of stillness.  

At dawn on the third day, Asuka finds Shinji sitting in their ghostly, immaculate kitchen with a pen and paper on the table before him. "What should we say?" he asks her. 

"I would keep it short," she replies. "And simple." 

Shinji begins:

_To whoever is reading this:_

_First, know that you are not alone. You are not alone. There are, to our knowledge and at the time of this writing, three people on this island._

_We lived here before you arrived, but we know we cannot survive if we stay in Tokyo-3, so we have moved on. You would be wise to do the same. There is little food or water left here._

_We have gone south to Hamamatsu on the coast, but because we have a child, we will probably not be in the city central. You are welcome to seek us out, if you so wish. Look for signs of life - smoke, noise, disturbances. We daresay we could use the company ourselves._

He looks up at her. "What do you think?" 

Asuka reads, appraising. "It's good. Now all that's left to do is put our names to it." 

Shinji nods, and continues writing: 

 _Perhaps we will see you there. Perhaps not._ _Whatever choice you make, we wish you luck._

_from Shinji Ikari-_

He pauses. "What do you want me to put down for you?" 

Asuka is silent for several long, dark moments. "Get rid of Langley. I'll just be Soryu, and so will Eve." 

He finishes the letter: 

_from Shinji Ikari, Asuka Soryu, and Eve Soryu_

They read the letter over multiple times, trying not to think about what it means. "I think that's it," Asuka says. Shinji nods in agreement, slides the letter into the generic-brand Ziploc bag they set aside for this very reason, and seals it tight. 

The letter sits conspicuously on the table, alone in the growing sunlight, and both Shinji and Asuka look at the paper and its message like it's an N2 mine about to go off. 

"I'll get Eve ready," she says, softly, "if you want to go place it." 

Shinji takes the letter and a plastic tray and heads to the grave-markers he erected in those lonely, agonizing months before Asuka rejoined him. He kneels before Misato's marker, her necklace still hanging from the still-rusty nail, and sets the tray down. "Maybe one day you'll come back too," he whispers, before he places the letter on the tray and piles rocks on top of it like a cairn. He leaves one corner of the bag exposed, although he thinks that the bulky, small pyramid in front of a line of crosses would be more than enough to get someone's attention. 

He takes a glance at the graveyard. Aside from the cairn, it still looks almost exactly the same as when he'd made it. 

Shinji looks at the work of his hands, and leaves the markers standing behind him in the sun. It's a beautiful day, and he'd hate to waste it. 

He leaves the graveyard, the LCL glowing amber in the light - he leaves it all behind him, and he does not look back. 

When he returns, Asuka has the car started and Eve on her lap. As he slides into the passenger seat, Asuka hands him the baby, and he buckles the seatbelt. Asuka has the windows rolled down and the stale scent of cigarette smoke is faint under the unnerving odor of grass and blood mixed together, but the sun is warm and both Shinji and Asuka think that they can almost ignore the smell, a relic of a bygone time.   

Shinji nods at her. Asuka takes a breath, and puts the car in drive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Blame Rilke. But also, thank Rilke, because the Duino Elegies are amazing, all ten of them.  
> 2\. This is my first NGE fanfiction, and I've got to say I've never found the task of making sure the characters are in character as outrageously difficult as I have with these two and this series. It's not even that they're difficult to understand from a writing perspective, it's just that there's so much of them. They're a lot to manage, so please be understanding if these two seem out of their normal characterization. I'm trying to get a read on them, but it's hard.  
> 3\. Comments and constructive criticism are much appreciated! This is a new fandom for me and one I'm a little insecure about, so please tell me what you think.  
> 4\. There may be a second part to this. I have more ideas that I haven't yet gotten to, but I'm not sure as to what will happen yet.


	2. Chapter 2

Hamamatsu rises before them, the water bending away to their left. There is a curious absence of energy in the gray faces of the skyscrapers, a slack stillness that Shinji finds unsettling. As Asuka drives through the city, dodging cars and rubble, the way the buildings loom over them slowly begins to seem suffocating, rather than comforting. A metal ding rings out, breaking the silence. 

"Shit," Asuka mutters. "That was a hubcap, I bet. I can't believe how much that N2 mine fucked things up. Stupid idiots." She pulls over outside what appears to be an otherwise unremarkable building. "Keep the car running. I'll be back soon." 

Shinji reads the sign:  _Super Viva Home Center_. But they don't need anything. They agreed to leave most of what they used behind. Asuka walks toward the formerly-automatic door and tries to slide it open, only to have it stop partway. She looks around, spots a nearby trolley, and sends it hurtling into the glass. Delicately stepping over the shards, she disappears into the depths of the store. 

"Well, your mom is resourceful, if nothing else," he tells Eve, who is asleep on his chest. "I don't know what she's doing, but she's not letting anything stop her. She never does." 

He dozes with Eve while Asuka does... whatever she's doing in the store. When he hears the tinkle and crunch of wheels on glass, he looks up, and Asuka has multiple bags of potting soil and several large pots loaded in her cart as she pushes it out to the car. Shinji blinks in surprise. 

"What is all this?" he asks her. "I thought we left everything we didn't need." 

"Spur of the moment idea," she responds. "And we do need this. Look in the top pot." 

Shinji does as she says and sees several packets of different kinds of seed. Tomato, eggplant, onion... "This was a really good idea, Asuka," he whispers, and he fully admits it: he's proud of her. 

"If we can get them to grow in the pots, maybe we can try transplanting a cutting into the ground. I tried to cover as many nutritional bases as possible, but their selection was limited. I basically took everything." 

Limited is still better than nothing, he almost says. But he isn't surprised that, between the two of them, Asuka is the one thinking that far ahead. Shinji helps her load everything into the back of the already-crammed car, and then they resume their journey... until Asuka pulls aside at another store. 

Shinji tells her that they don't have the space, and Asuka tells Shinji to trust her. She breaks the glass in the door and disappears, but returns much quicker this time, holding two full bags. She sets them at his feet and gets back behind the wheel, and they continue making their way through the city to the suburbs. 

They aren't quite as far out as they'd like to be, but Eve starts to cry and Asuka suggests they pull over for the night, so they stop beside a stranger's house and let themselves inside. They use their host's cookware to make vegetables and miso soup out of powder, one of the few Japanese dishes Asuka actually enjoys, and sit down on the floor. They eat then attend to Eve, and because the house has no crib, Asuka feeds her, changes her diaper, then swaddles her to make sure she can't get into any trouble. 

"Hopefully she won't mind it." Eve hasn't been swaddled since she started to walk. "Or roll over during the night." 

They leave Eve swaddled, wrapped in a blanket, in the middle of the room. They unroll tatami mats Shinji finds elsewhere and slide under the blankets they brought from the place they (mostly Asuka) refuse to call "home." 

Shinji positions himself so that he still can keep an eye on Eve, who remains sleeping in the exact spot Asuka left her in. Asuka is already breathing deeply, and Shinji barely has a second to think about how tired she must be before he falls asleep himself. 

Eve wakes them up at dawn the next day, and Shinji is the one to roll out from under his blanket and check up on her. She babbles when she sees him, "baba," and it never fails to make him smile, as he removes her swaddling. She kicks her legs happily once she's free. 

"Otou," Shinji says, pointing to himself. "Papa." 

"It's  _vater_ in German," Asuka grumbles, sitting up, brushing the hair from her eyes. "Like Darth Vader." 

"Vater," Shinji repeats, pointing to himself again. Eve looks at him blankly, then holds out her arms to Asuka. 

"All right,  _mutter_ is here," she says. "Let's see if I can get these sweet potatoes down your throat." Fortunately for them, Eve doesn't fight Asuka much on her choice of breakfast. 

Asuka packs up the blankets and puts away the tatami mats while Shinji washes the dishes in the sink with the water still left in the pipes, Eve sitting and watching intently. She changes Eve's diaper one more time before they hit the road, tossing it in the bag Shinji had thankfully remembered to set aside for Eve's used nappies. Both she and Shinji had slept in their clothes the night before and the coastal air is sticky, and Asuka looks forward to the moment when she's able to bathe again. 

Before they leave, Asuka raids the kitchen, and Shinji frowns. "What if they come back?"

"Then they can steal from someone else," she says, taking a bag of uncooked rice and depositing it in the car. "If we stick to the schedule, this will last us at least a week. And I didn't see you complaining when I stole this car. And the seeds. And everything else, basically." 

That's true. They have to live, and there really are no other options - as far as they know, they're still the only ones who have returned. Asuka appears to be far more comfortable with looting and thievery than he is, so he figures he'll just leave those parts up to her. 

Asuka sparks the engine into life again, and they stop at a gas station on the border of city and suburb. She siphons gas out of another abandoned car in the ghostly lot while Shinji, noticing the bags at his feet, rifles through them. There are at least two books on edible plants and fungi, complete with pictures. A dusty copy of an  _Ornithological Society of Japan_ publication, "Check-List of Various Birds, Seventh Ed." There's a copy of  _A Beginner's Guide to Gardening_ and  _A Beginner's Guide to Plant_ _Propagation_. Another book on something called "bushcraft." A selection of picture books, then easy-to-read chapter books for children. And, buried on the bottom (indicating Asuka probably went there first), books about childhood and child-rearing, one specifically about toilet-training. 

"I'll have to read that one. I'm kind of dreading it," she says through the open window, jolting him out of his reverie, "but I'd rather be prepared. Although we don't know if the water treatment system is still working. We should still have a couple of rain barrels, just in case." 

She slides back into the car and drives them further out of the city. They're well into the suburbs now, and Shinji watches houses pass by without much interest in any of them at all. Eve fidgets on his lap, holding her stuffed rabbit. 

"How will we know when to stop?"

"Dunno," she says. "I guess we'll know it when we see it." They drive for another half-hour, when Asuka suddenly hits the brake, sending him hurtling forward toward the dash, clutching Eve to his chest. "I think I see it." 

It's decidedly not Japanese - it reminds Asuka of houses she'd seen on the outskirts of Berlin, the Rhineland houses in Strasbourg in France, and all of a sudden she's strangely homesick. She turns to Shinji with an eager expression on her face. 

"Let's take a look," he says, and Asuka breaks the lock on the front door. Once they do they realize the front of the building was deceiving: the house is far larger than it looks from the road. There's a gently curving staircase, soft yellow-white walls, black and white tile on the floor. It's a beautiful house, of a style that Shinji is emphatically unfamiliar with, and he almost wants to leave because he feels so out-of-place. 

But the only reason that they're even here at all is because he had a good time in Hamamatsu, once, a lifetime ago. Maybe he's still chasing that feeling, despite the world falling apart around them, maybe that's what drove him here. Let Asuka have her German house. Let her have her happiness where she can. 

"Oh, thank god, they have real beds," Asuka says, happily bouncing on one. Eve toddles unsteadily to meet her and demands to join her mother with an imperious "up!" Asuka picks up Eve and deposits her on the bed, and the baby squeals as Asuka intentionally bounces on the mattress and Eve topples over, laughing. 

"Rich people must have lived here," Shinji says. The furnishings in the home are nice, aged but still sturdy - it's something that westerners do, building their furniture to last. 

"Obviously. There's too much detail for it to have just been any old construction company. This house was custom-built. By foreigners, I bet. Rich foreigners, like you said." Asuka looks around the room. "They did a good job too. They even built it to look kind of weathered, like the houses it's modeled on. I wonder how old it is." 

"Do you miss Germany?" Shinji asks, and Asuka nods, heavily.

"It's where I grew up. I've still spent most of my life there. I miss the Rhineland, I miss Berlin, I miss being able to get on a train or plane and hours later I'm somewhere entirely new. That's something to be said for Europe, despite all." 

He's never really thought about it much - contemplated it, but never turned it over or explored it in his hands - how Asuka came to Japan so suddenly, how big a shock it must have been. He realizes that some of Asuka's pre-Impact behavior (some, not all) must have been her difficulty adjusting to a new place, a new culture, new people. People like him. 

"I'd like to see it one day." She nods, and wistfulness softens her usual frown. 

"We should see what works," she says at last, and gets up, leaving Eve looking after her in confusion. 

* * *

Shinji takes stock of the kitchen while Asuka goes outside to evaluate the various meters. 

She returns and says that she can't guarantee that anything is still functional, and that water, even from the tap, will need to be boiled before it's consumed. 

"Heat?" he asks, not that they really need it, and she shakes her head. 

"We're lucky that the N2 mine didn't destroy any gas lines. Or the house itself. There are some missing shingles but that's about the worst of it, just from what I've seen." 

"Electricity?" 

"That's where we might -  _might_ \- get lucky. They have solar panels. If I can figure out how their system works I might be able to reroute it if necessary, if the panels are still intact. Problem is that they probably won't be enough to power the whole house." 

"If they can power the kitchen and the lights, that's all I care about." 

"Maybe. I'll have to take a closer look, but that can happen tomorrow." She sits at the table. "Power engineering isn't my specialty, but maybe I can make it work." 

Shinji opens another cupboard. "They don't have a rice cooker," he says, and Asuka groans. 

"Well, it's not like we could use it anyway," she says, and he has to concede her point. "Is there anything good?" 

"A lot of it has to be thrown away, but there are some non-perishables. There's flour, but no yeast." 

"Flatbreads, then," she says. "Better than no bread." 

Shinji takes a look at the patio, where - extremely lucky for them - there's already a firepit. Since he'll have to cook the old-fashioned way - a fire and a pot - this firepit saves him quite a bit of time. He finds a bag of charcoal briquettes and some wire in a garden shed near the treeline and drags to where he needs it. Past the strand of trees, a clear hill rises. 

He takes a pot outside, to where Asuka is constructing a tripod over the pit, and attaches wire to the handles. He fills it with water and waits for her to finish, hangs the pot over the flame and waits for the water to boil. When it finishes, he pours it into a second pot, puts the rice in the first, and then pours the boiled water back in. Raw vegetables and rice is a sparse meal, again, but it's food. Asuka and Shinji eat hungrily, while Eve watches. 

"We should start a compost pile," Asuka says after they finish. There's nothing left of their meals so the point is somewhat moot, but not all parts of every plant are edible, and she's thinking ahead. "I'm sure there's something in one of the books about it." 

Eve makes a low, keening sound, one that Shinji and Asuka have to come recognize: hunger. Asuka sighs, resignedly, and takes off her shirt. 

"I can work on making some food for her," Shinji says as he cleans up. "I think she can handle rice." 

" _Ouch-_ yeah, I think so too. Stop biting me, Eve." She sets the girl down and puts her shirt back on. "I bet solid food is also in one of those books." Asuka takes a look at Eve, then grabs a nearby rag and wipes the corner of the little girl's mouth. Eve grumbles and pulls away. Asuka grits her teeth. "You know what? You need a bath anyway." 

Shinji is sure that Asuka didn't mean for her words to sound threatening, but then, she's never been particularly careful about how she comes across. "I'll heat up some water."

"Heat up enough for us too," she calls after him. "You might as well if you're already doing it." 

* * *

He waits downstairs while Asuka bathes Eve, hearing lots of splashing and furious German from the floor above him. Eventually Asuka, dripping wet, comes down with a clean Eve. "Here," she snarls, shoving Eve into his arms as she promptly turns and makes her way back upstairs without another word. 

He looks at the little girl and raises his eyebrows. Apparently he doesn't look as disapproving as he would like, because Eve giggles and points at his face, her few teeth breaking her gum-less smile. "Well, I tried," he whispers, then settles her on his lap. "You need to make it easy for your mother. It's been hard for her, for all of us. So... relax, okay?" 

Eve's response to that is to yawn and settle herself against his chest, little fist holding tightly to his shirt. Shinji sighs, then sits thinking about everything he and Asuka need to do tomorrow. 

Asuka takes a long time in the bathroom. Shinji can't blame her, since she tackled bathing Eve on her own, so he doesn't complain - she probably needs time for herself. The water will probably be tepid, if not outright cool by the time she returns, but he's okay with that. 

When she comes back down, her hair wrapped in a towel like a turban, she takes Eve from Shinji and sets her daughter on her hip. "Past your bedtime," she says, as Eve begins to whimper. " _No_ , Eve. It's time for bed." Her voice is low and curt, clearly irritated, and her tone is enough to make Eve reconsider complaining. 

Asuka and Eve find a room that looks like it was, at one point, for a child. Asuka strips the sheets from the bed, since they haven't been washed in god knows how long, and takes a pillow and blanket they brought with them and tucks it around the child. Asuka wonders if Eve should, at ten months, still be in a crib, but since they haven't come across one there's really no point in contemplating it. She strokes Eve's head, wishes her good night (in German, of course), and gently closes the door. 

She makes her way back downstairs, mind still whirring too much to sleep. She sees the car through the open window, and the blankets that still remain in it, so she slides on her shoes and brings them inside, knowing that Shinji will probably be realizing his oversight any second now. 

Sure enough, she damn near runs into him as she finally finds the door to the room he's in. "Thanks," he mumbles sheepishly as she forces them to his chest. "I kind of forgot." 

"Clearly." She watches him, realizing that he is watching her, taking her in: the shirt that barely grazes her hipbones, the old shorts she uses for sleeping, her exposed legs. Both she and Shinji are thin, as much from the rationing as their genetics, and from running around after Eve. Asuka may have become even smaller, slimmer and frailer, than she was before the Third Impact. 

"G-goodnight," Shinji stutters, placing the pillow and blanket on the bed and curling up, Asuka left standing with her own in her hand. 

"Goodnight," she whispers, annoyed, as she crawls onto the bed beside him and turns onto her side, away from his blushing face. It doesn't last, though; after a while Shinji rolls onto his other side and throws an arm around her. Asuka lets him draw her close, lets herself fall asleep to the feel of his chest collapsing and expanding against her. 

She would never admit, but it's nice. 

* * *

They live. It's hard, harder than almost anything they've ever tried to do, but they're still alive. 

One day Asuka wakes up to find Shinji already in the kitchen, salt-coated fingers making onigiri, more than what he'd usually make for breakfast. "What's the occasion?" she yawns as she walks into the room. 

Shinji beams. "It's Eve's birthday today. I figured we should celebrate at least a little." To his surprise, though, Asuka flops into a chair and puts her head in her hands. 

"Shit," she mutters. "I completely forgot. My own kid." She sighs. "Luckily she isn't up yet." 

"There's a lot happening. It's not surprising. You're just trying to keep all of us alive, things are gonna slip." Asuka is the one figuring out the big things, the long-term things - power, food, all their essentials; he runs the day-to-day. He has nightmares about what could have happened if he was left to care for Eve on his own; they usually end with the image of a baby's skeleton half-submerged, the tide of the amber sea gently washing over it, bird calls echoing in the background. 

She snorts. "You clearly don't know the wrath I would've unleashed if someone forgot my birthday." Shinji thinks he has an idea, but doesn't say anything.

"It's okay, Asuka, really. She's only a year old, it's not like she knows what it is." 

Asuka glances at the sun. "She probably needs to wake up. You're cooking. I'll get her dressed." She disappears, and a while later returns, setting Eve down so the little girl can walk across the floor - Eve hasn't yet learned how to deal with stairs. 

"Happy birthday," Shinji says as he sets out the onigiri. "You're one year old today, Eve! How does it feel?" She gurgles and smiles and says both their names, clapping her hands. Shinji has made tiny onigiri, almost comically small, for Eve so she can pick them up with her thumb and forefinger, small enough that she won't choke on them. 

"Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, mädchen," Asuka repeats, before taking a bite of her adult-sized onigiri. 

Together they eat, Eve clumsily and enthusiastically, Shinji trying not to smile at Eve's mess, and Asuka observing it all curiously. 

* * *

The next month it's Shinji's turn to wake and walk curiously into the kitchen, only to find someone else already there. 

"What are you doing?" he asks as Asuka, looking somewhat discombobulated, salts her fingers and hesitantly makes onigiri. 

"It's your birthday, isn't it?" she responds. "I told myself I wouldn't forget another one, no matter whose it was." The onigiri are clumsily made, but even he can recognize the fact that Asuka is trying her hardest, has been trying her hardest every single day. 

Shinji smiles, and takes a seat. 

* * *

The months pass. Asuka's birthday passes, the New Year passes, and they're (somehow) still alive.  

He finds Asuka in the garden, with one of her gardening books, looking at the rows of vegetables curiously. 

"All this overgrowth, and the only thing they wanna eat is my tomatoes? No. Unacceptable." She sighs, then straightens, muttering to herself, "at least the coffee grounds have kept the slugs away." 

"Are the plants doing all right?" 

"Could be doing better, but it's no fault of ours. We need more rain. And fewer bugs." Asuka wipes her brow. "It was a good idea to keep one of every plant inside. At least we have something to fall back on if something outside dies." 

"It was  _your_ idea, Asuka," he says, and she gives him an exaggerated, mocking bow. Suddenly he notices how gently tanned she is, her leanness, how her hair sets off her eyes, how there's a smudge of dirt across her nose. She has freckles now, from spending so much time in the sun. They suit her. 

"What are you looking at?" 

"N-nothing," he stutters, and Asuka raises her eyebrows like she doesn't believe him. 

"Sure, whatever you say, Third," she says, chuckling, turning back to her plants. "We're bathing today, right?" 

"Yeah, I think so." He has to heat up the water, but he knows Asuka is looking forward to it. Staying clean has proved to be a bigger challenge than anyone expected, because Eve needs to bathe more frequently than he and Asuka do. "More frequently" usually means around every three to five days, give or take, but their water supply is getting low and already Asuka is talking about driving out to find pre-bottled water. As things stand, the two adults have been washing about every two to two and a half weeks. 

He takes a glance at Eve, sitting on the patio, playing with her rabbit. She'll never know the world her mother knew. She might never know plumbing or computers or water on demand. Everything, even the simple, basic, necessary things, will be a challenge. Sometimes he can't help himself but wonder, even if it is hypocritical: why bring a child into a world where survival is so capricious? 

"Thank god. I'm looking forward to it. Let me know when you're ready, okay?" she says as she walks towards the trees. 

"Okay," he calls after her. "Probably around sunset." Asuka gives him a thumbs-up, takes her rifle from the shed, and disappears into the woods. 

* * *

When sunset arrives, he calls outside for Asuka, then gets Eve ready for her bath. Eve has been known to be rambunctious at bath time, so he hopes that the warm water will help soothe her, and they can put her down for the night without too much fuss. They switch off on bathing her, and since Asuka did it last time, it's his turn to clean Eve up. 

Lucky for him, Eve is tired tonight, and allows him to wash her without much of a hassle. He dresses her in her pajamas and wishes her goodnight, says that it's too late for a story, and tells her that  _mutter_ will come to wish her goodnight once she's clean as well. 

Asuka is already bathing when he gets back, but the door is ajar, so he barges in anyway and... "Sorry, sorry!" 

"It's fine," she says, closing her eyes. "I'm almost done. You might as well start." When he gives her an incredulous look, she sighs. "Really, it's okay. You might as well while the water is still warm."

He hesitantly undresses, wondering why he's so shy  _now_ , of all times. Asuka, on the other hand, has watched Shinji watch a human come out of her, so she figures that they have nothing left to be shy about. 

"Thanks," Shinji says, uncertainly. Asuka wraps herself in a nearby towel and opens the door. 

"All yours," she yawns. Shinji focuses on cleaning himself, but Asuka is watching him out of the corner of her eye, taking in the faint blush on his cheeks. It's reassuring to know that not _everything_ has changed. 

Shinji takes his time, finding comfort in the warmth of the water, thinking about how Asuka had barely reacted to his intrusion. She'd smacked him for less before, before Instrumentality happened - he thinks that she's had no other choice but to mellow out. Every iota of energy they each have in them is devoted to keeping themselves, and Eve, alive. Neither of them have the time, or the energy, to be neurotic. It's hard enough to live now, with the world the way it is. 

He checks on Eve first, satisfied to see that she's sleeping soundly. When he enters his and Asuka's room, it takes a second for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but he sees that Asuka is not asleep, but rather sitting up, waiting for him. She's wearing nothing but a t-shirt and her underwear, and her feet brush against each other in a way that he'd almost call self-conscious. 

He meets her gaze, holds it for what seems like an eternity, searching for something unnamed but nonetheless recognizable in her eyes. Without realizing he's doing it he crawls onto the bed, on his hands and knees, and Asuka retreats as he comes towards her, sliding away from his advance. 

Eventually she can move no farther and Asuka waits, muscles coiled tight, tense as a rabbit caught in the gaze of a hawk. Shinji waits for something, feels compelled to prolong the waiting, wants to hear nothing but the ragged sound of their breathing in the night.

They walk a cliff's edge. They finally fall when Shinji, possessed of courage he never imagined he had, leans forward and kisses her, and the moment he does he closes his eyes and becomes part of the darkness.

* * *

The moonlight filters in through the blinds, striping his body like a tiger. 

If he thought about it, he could almost sense it, the way the light falls on him, but at the moment the world is nothing but heat and the feel of Asuka's hands on his back and the salty taste of the sweat he licks from her hairline. 

It is a long night, and it passes slowly. It seems like it takes forever for Asuka to break, then him, the two of them collapsing side by side in the gloom. Asuka blindly nestles her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder, he wraps an arm around her, and they both fall asleep before they realize that it happens. 

For the first time in what seems like a lifetime, neither one of them dreams. 

* * *

Asuka wakes with the dawn. She stretches, legs and other parts sore, and settles back down to try to get a little more sleep. But she accidentally jostles Shinji awake, and he stretches too, yawns, then rolls over onto his side to look at her. 

"Morning," he says. 

"Morning," she whispers back. What else is there to say? 

They remain silent, letting the tension grow, before Shinji breaks it with his talent for asking awkward questions. 

"It wasn't...  _bad_ , was it?" he asks, and Asuka can't help herself: she snorts. 

"I can honestly say the best I've ever had," she says, unable to keep the chortle out of her voice, but she sees his crestfallen face she becomes serious. "I don't think so. I don't have anything to compare it to, but I don't think it was bad." 

Shinji looks cheered by her words, relaxing onto his pillow, watching her with something unreadable in his eyes. The look is tenderness, but Asuka can't - or won't - recognize it for what it is, so she calls him out on it.  

"Why are you looking at me like that?" 

"Hmm?" 

"You look so sappy. What's up with that?" 

"Just thinking," he replies. "I was thinking about the day I met you, what I thought when I first saw you."

"Oh." That... now,  _that_ is a little more interesting. "What did you think?" 

Any other time, that question would have been a minefield. But Shinji is full of afterglow hormones, and the lazy sunrise is sweet soft pink and gold filling his head, so he gives it to her straight. "I thought that you were the prettiest girl I'd ever seen," he answers, uncaring of how lovestruck it must make him look. "Even though you were... uh..." 

"Even though I was what?"

"Um... tempestuous?" he offers. Apparently Asuka finds humor in his diplomatic answer, because she gives a snorting chuckle, but doesn't dispute or argue it. He rolls onto his back. "What did you think of me?" 

"Did I not tell you exactly what I thought of you?" 

"That can't be all of it." 

"Fine... Short," she replies bluntly. "Almost prettier than me. A pushover, weak-willed, a coward. But kind, I guess. I wasn't used to people being kind." It is Asuka's nature to attack first and ask questions (or apologize) later. The day after she met him, she dreamed of a possum, playing dead in the middle of the autobahn, waiting for the cars to pass before lumbering to the other side. "Maybe that's why I hated you." 

He purposefully passes over her moment of honesty, for her sake. "I'm taller than you now. We've both grown, Asuka." 

"Mm," she agrees. "Your hair is longer now." When Shinji frowns and pushes at it with his fingers, she takes his wrist in her hand. "I didn't say it was bad. It suits you." He smiles. 

As they lay in bed the sun keeps rising. There is no stopping it. 

* * *

It becomes a semi-regular thing from that moment on. They don't always have the energy for sex, or the time, but when they do they both enjoy it nonetheless. 

One day, Shinji is out back with Eve, while Asuka is inside fiddling around with the breaker box. He's cleaning out the ash from the firepit when he looks up, past the strand of trees to the hill, the field, and is struck dumb by what he sees. 

Ryoji Kaji stands on the hill before him. He's fully bearded now, stubble gone with the rest of civilization, and while Kaji had once been one of the most observant people Shinji had ever met, strangely enough now he doesn't seem to have noticed the people down below. He looks around, slowly, then his gaze comes to land on Shinji and Eve, half-hidden behind the patio's low wall, and he breaks into one of the largest smiles Shinji has ever seen from him. 

"It's you, isn't it, Ikari?" Kaji shouts as he runs as neatly and carefully as he can down the hill. Shinji waits for Kaji to clear the trees, and even though he comes out of the thicket a bit off-center, Shinji has almost never been so glad to see anyone in his life. Kaji scoops him into a hug as soon as they meet face to face.

"Yeah, it's me. I can't believe it's you! How long have you been looking for us?" Turning his head back to the house, he yells, "Hey, Asuka! Come out here! You're never going to believe this!" 

"I've been looking for you two for months. God, time... Well, we can get into that later. How are you doing? And how is Asuka?" He takes a breath. "Okay. One thing at a time. One - I got your letter. I left it there in case anybody else shows up. You could have been a little bit more specific about where you were going. Two - who the hell is Eve Soryu?" 

Sure enough, Asuka chooses that exact moment to step onto the patio, Eve running to her mother as fast as her little legs can take her. Asuka bends down and puts Eve on her hip as she walks over, listening to Eve's rapid babbling, when she takes in the sight of Shinji and Kaji and her face turns completely white. "You came back," she says abruptly. 

Kaji looks similarly shocked. "I did. Asuka... whose baby is that?" He stares at Asuka, concerned and surprised, and then at Eve, who buries her face in her mother's shoulder when Kaji's eyes land on her.  

"This one would be mine," she says at last, and Kaji presses his lips tighter. "Kaji, meet Eve. Eve, this is Kaji. Say 'hi,' Eve." But Eve just shakes her head and grips Asuka's shirt tighter. Setting Eve down, Asuka sighs as the little girl clings to her leg. "Sorry. You're the first person she's ever met who isn't the two of us. At least she's not having a screaming meltdown." 

Kaji's gaze travels between Asuka and Shinji, looking for the confirmation he isn't going to get. "So... let me get this straight... you two-" 

"No," Asuka snaps. "It's not like that." 

"Then what is it like? Tell me what happened, Asuka." 

"Do you really think you can show up here and start bossing me around?" she demands, starting to crouch forward like a lion getting ready to pounce. "You're not in charge here anymore, Kaji, no one is. And I don't have to tell you anything."

Asuka telling Kaji off: that's something Shinji would never have expected to see in a thousand years, apocalypse be damned. 

Kaji holds up his hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound judgmental. I just... I'm concerned, okay? I just want to know what happened." 

"Yeah, so do I," Asuka says, and Kaji's eyes grow wide. 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean I don't know how it happened," she says. "I don't know. All I know is that when I came back, I was..." 

Kaji nods. "So... her father..." 

"I don't think she has one," Asuka says, after a long beat. "Not a biological one, anyway." 

Kaji says "Ah," and "I see," but then goes silent. He looks at Eve too, at her blue eyes and her dark hair, pulled into pigtails, the stubborn jut and prow of her chin so like her mother's. "How old is she?"

"Almost two," Asuka whispers, and she smooths her hand over Eve's hair almost unconsciously. Shinji wonders if she even realizes that she's doing it. 

Kaji smiles. "She looks like you," he says, crouching down to hold out his hand to Eve, and hesitantly, slowly, she takes it. 

* * *

Shinji is preparing ingredients for dinner in the kitchen while Eve colors at the table. As he chops the onions Asuka has grown, he takes a glance at Eve's pictures out of the corner of his eye.   

"What are you drawing?" he asks Eve, who picks up another crayon (navy blue, then green) and continues to draw. 

"Angel," she says. The house has a few children's books with pictures of angels in them - mostly blonde, clothed in white, androgynous and golden. Maybe Asuka read one to her. 

"Ah," he says. "How do we say it in German?" He doesn't know much German, to be fair, but he knows that word intimately.  

" _Engel_ ," Eve recites, not bothering to stop her coloring. 

"And Japanese?" The world stops dead when, simultaneously, Shinji says "tenshi" and Eve says "shito." He smiles, not letting a stab of fear seep through, and says, "I think you mean 'tenshi,' Eve. That's what the word 'angel' is in Japanese."

"No, papa.  _Shito_." Holding up her picture, she says, "See? Shito _._ "  _Angel._  

A child's vision of Sachiel stares up at him from the paper. It can't be anything else - the red S2 engine in the chest, the square shoulders, the beak-like mask... or was it always a face? What disturbs him first are all the questions racing through his mind. What disturbs him next is the fact that her drawing is so _good._ The obvious question - what the  _fuck?_ \- aside, her drawing is unusually detailed and realistic, especially for a girl who's only just turned two. It's still flat, two-dimensional, imperfect, but it's far more than just random scribbles. It's cohesive, a unified production of Eve's will to create it. 

He takes a seat at the table next to her. "Hey, kiddo. Can I ask you what this is?" 

"Angel, papa. We said so." 

"Yeah, I know, but where did you see it?"  _How do you know what - who - that thing is?_

"Inside. I see them inside." 

"Them? This isn't the only one you see?"

Eve nods. "Lots of them. But only one in a row." 

"And inside? What does that mean?" 

"When I in bed, I see them." 

"So you see them when you dream, huh." But Eve's never seen an Angel in the flesh. How on Earth... 

Shinji thinks back to the beach, Asuka's tears as she tells him underneath the bloody moon, the sickness that tore at her for months. It throws a whole new laundry list of questions into the mystery that is Eve's conception. Now, he is no longer as certain about her as he once was.

But Eve looks up at him curiously. "Dream?" 

"Like pictures when you sleep. Pictures that come when you go to bed. Those are dreams." 

Eve nods to herself. "Dream," she repeats. 

Shinji slides her drawing over to his seat. "Hey kiddo. This is a really good picture, but I think it would scare your mom, and she's been working really hard, so how about we keep this between us? It'll be our little secret. Only you and me will know about it." 

Eve beams. "Okay!" Then, after a beat: "Secret?"

"A secret is something that you don't tell anyone else. Because we have a secret, you don't tell mom, and I don't tell mom." Eve nods, trying to emulate his solemnity. "How about you go find Uncle Kaji now, yeah?" Eve bounces away from the table and runs outside, while Shinji hides Sachiel under the washing machine in the laundry room, which is the one place he's sure Asuka will never find it. Asuka hates laundry above all other chores. 

He can't explain why, or how, Eve knows about the Angels. He can't explain how she was able to draw Sachiel so accurately. He can't explain the way she seems like a normal toddler the vast majority of the time, but every now and then, there's something unearthly and predatory in the cast of her gaze. He can't explain how she runs around like any other hyperactive toddler, but then will become discordantly motionless, statuesque, still as a pond in the height of summer. How Eve seems to wait for something, listen for (or to) something neither he nor Asuka can hear. 

She's a little girl. She's  _his_ little girl, and he loves her with his whole heart. But that doesn't mean he understands her, and it certainly doesn't mean that sometimes, despite himself, he is not just a little bit afraid of her. 

* * *

They find Kaji a room in the house, get him settled, and then Asuka wastes no time in setting him to work.

She promptly sends Kaji out to look at the solar panels, to see if he could possibly puzzle out their engineering. Shinji wonders how much Kaji even knows about power systems, but Asuka pulls him into their room after he's done putting away the laundry, and shows him just exactly  _why_  it doesn't matter if Kaji knows anything or not. It's a very satisfying demonstration. 

Kaji also helps watch over Eve, leaving Shinji with more time to cook and plan and clean - and also more time to spend with Asuka. It's nice, to be able to help her fiddle with wires and grope around in the dirt. One day, they go down the rows of the garden and she tells him the name of each plant, so he can add it in Japanese underneath the German labels. She gives him a shooting lesson with the rifle, setting up some scavenged cans on the patio ledge, and afterwards they both end up agreeing that Asuka will remain their primary hunter. She brings down a brace of pheasants later that same day, and she helps Shinji pluck them, the two of them sitting together at the counter. She tickles him under the nose with a feather and throws herself across the naked birds to block his sneeze, sending Kaji and Eve into gales of laughter. Shinji cooks the pheasants with rice and tomatoes and all of them, even Eve, eat heartily. Time passes, and between the four of them it almost easy to forget that there  _are_ only four of them, living together in a stranger's house.  

The next day he hears a noise coming from the laundry room. Shinji hears a muffled "shit, where did that cap go?" come from a voice that sounds suspiciously like Asuka's and, remembering the drawing, he bolts for the door. 

He arrives too late. When he pushes into the room, Asuka is kneeling in front of the washing machine. She holds Sachiel in her hands, and her eyes and open mouth look... they look... 

Haunted. Heartbroken. Terrified. The way they used to be before the end. Before Eve. Suddenly, he's frightened. Not of Asuka, but of the secret he has kept, for Eve's sake. For the sake of the peace they've managed to make. 

He wants to ask her what she's going there but he sees Eve's dirty clothes in her hands. He swallows.  

Asuka rises to her feet, and when she sees him she shoves the drawing at his chest. "What the  _fuck_ is this?" 

Shinji can't answer, because truly, he doesn't know. "I don't know how she knows - knew - but..." 

"But fucking what, Shinji?! I know I haven't told her anything. Have you?" 

"No," he says, "truly. I haven't, Asuka. I promise." 

"Promises," she spits. "Made to be broken, weren't they?" Sachiel falls to the ground, and Asuka steps on him as she makes her way out the door. 

Shinji eyes Eve's drawing, crumpled and creased, dirt from Asuka's boot staining the few white spaces in Sachiel's torso. 

Strangely enough, it doesn't ruin him at all. It only makes him more complete. 

* * *

One day, Kaji hears a noise coming from the bathroom. He rattles the knob and knocks, but the person on the other side - he thinks it's Asuka - doesn't answer. 

He thinks he hears sobbing, and that's all he needs. He braces his shoulder against the door, twists the locked knob in his hand, and pushes until the door bursts open. 

Sure enough, it's Asuka. She's bent double over the toilet, in tears, clutching at her midsection, and he does take a moment to notice that she's completely nude from the waist down. Delicately he kneels in front of her, keeping his eyes on her face, and asks her what's wrong. 

"It's nothing," she says, releasing one hand to wipe away her tears, "it's nothing. It'll pass." But immediately afterwards she tenses, bends her torso almost flat against her knees, and Kaji takes her arm in his hand.

"Clearly it's something," he responds. "Want me to go find Shinji?" 

"No!" she says, frantic, her fingers white-knuckled. "No. He doesn't need to know. There's nothing he can do." 

Kaji doesn't doubt that Shinji probably will not be able to help Asuka in any concrete way, but he thought bringing the boy in might comfort her. Apparently not. 

He tries to look her in the face. "Asuka. What's happening?" 

"It's nothing, like I said!" Suddenly she lurches off the toilet and staggers to her feet, pacing around, and Kaji sees blood flowing down her thighs. 

He sighs. "Oh, Asuka." 

He's not entirely certain what's happening, but he has a guess, and if he's right... it's just so  _unfair._ Asuka has been through more than enough already. 

"Please," she pants, grabbing at his arm, and her fingers leave bloody prints on his skin. "You can't tell Shinji. You can't. Promise me. Promise me!" 

He sighs again, leans his head back against the wall. "How long?" he asks her. 

"Twenty weeks or so." Her voice is a broken whisper, completely flat. "I was going to tell him as soon as the vegetable harvesting was done. I guess I don't have to do that now." 

He knows Asuka well enough to know she likely isn't kidding. "He needs to know. He deserves that. You know he does." 

Asuka slams her fist against the wall. "Why? There's going to be nothing to show for it. Just blood and pain.  _My_ blood.  _My_ pain." 

Kaji can see her point, that the physicality of this pain belongs to Asuka and all the other life-bearers alone, but to think that Shinji won't feel this loss with her is absurd. "Do you really think this won't hurt him too?" 

"I think you can't miss what was never there to begin with," she says, a frantic, rising note emerging in her voice. She tosses her head as she staggers against the wall, as if she can shake the remnants of the life that had been growing inside her loose. Kaji is reminded of a mare getting ready to foal: the reeling, the lurching, the neck reaching back with snapping teeth. 

He tries to keep her grounded. "That's unfair, and you know it." 

"I don't care!" she snaps, and suddenly she's crying again with a vengeance. "If you're not going to say anything useful, then fucking leave! Get out! I can do this by myself!"

Underneath them, although he's sure Asuka doesn't notice, a chair scrapes back abruptly. 

"I'll leave if you really want me to, but you need to be honest with me as to why." He adjusts himself on the floor, ignoring the fact that his backside is asleep. 

"Stay then, go, I don't care!" She breaks off into sobs after that and sits back down on the toilet, frenziedly wiping at her thighs with a washrag. 

"What's this really about?" he asks, all the needling undertones in his voice gone - all that's there in that room is just a frightened girl and her incomplete creation, a half-woken dream, and a man who has come to think of that girl as his own. 

Asuka twists the washrag in her fingers. "It's not that I wanted it. I don't think I did. We were trying to be as careful as possible but... we knew we couldn't be certain. We knew what might happen. It's not that I... It's not that I wanted... _it_ for its own sake, I just... I think I wanted to prove that I could. I did it once already, so why couldn't I do it again? I don't understand how I could do right the first time, and then not again. It's not fair."

He pats her arm. "No, it isn't. I'm sorry." That's what he should've said. He's always saying the wrong things, staying quiet at the wrong moments. He's trying not to make the same mistake again.

"I didn't want it for its own sake. But I wasn't... it isn't fair..." Asuka sniffles, wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I didn't have a choice with Eve. And when I _did_ have a choice, when I did know, when I wouldn't have minded, it... it just goes up in smoke. I don't have the choice in the things that I have. All the things I have aren't things that I want." Her fist strikes the wall again. "And... do you know what the worst part is? When it started, when I realized... you know what my first thought was? 'Oh, there's one less mouth to feed.' I wasn't sad. I was  _relieved_. What kind of first thought _is_ that? What kind of person _feels_ that way?" She starts to sob again, her cries becoming increasingly ardent despite his mild-voiced consolations, and that's when Kaji realizes that he's lost her. He strokes her hair and lets her cry and doesn't say anything except soft hushes and gentle reassurances. 

"What's going on?" Shinji stands in the doorway, taking the whole scene in with complete and utter shock. "Asuka, what happened?" 

Asuka says nothing. She just keeps crying. 

Kaji jerks his head at Shinji, and then at Asuka, and it's lucky that Shinji didn't come back from Instrumentality as oblivious as he was before it. He understands instantly, and rushes to kneel before Asuka on the toilet, kissing her knuckles softly as he peers up at her. Kaji hears "what's wrong" come from Shinji's mouth and Asuka's high, hitching pauses as she catches her breath, then the low torrent of her pain as she tells Shinji everything, her voice yet another stream of blood. 

The last thing he sees before he closes the door is the two of them, Asuka and Shinji, on the ground together. Asuka sits half-in Shinji's lap, half-between his thighs, her own ruddy legs spread open. She weeps into his shirt and Shinji holds her tightly to his body, crushingly, punishing, like he wants to hide her inside himself, like he can't get her close enough. His knuckles on her shoulder and neck are white. His teeth are gritted, clenched shut, but his tears slip out onto the top of Asuka's head, and Kaji takes this as his cue to slip away. 

Eve is sitting at the table, her paper and crayons in front of her. "Is something wrong with mama?" Her voice is soft, every word carefully and hesitantly enunciated, her eyes wide with concern. Kaji doesn't comment on how impressive her grasp of language is for her age. There's too much going on and Eve will still be a genius child even after it's all over. 

Kaji sits down heavily next to her and takes a glance at her drawing.  _Hm. Not bad._  Not that it's particularly hard to draw Sandalphon, eerie creature that he was, but the thought still stands. "We're all going to be just fine," he tells her as he smiles, and hands Eve an orange crayon.  

* * *

The rain begins a week later. Asuka is still pale and quiet and drowsy, staring out at the garden and the hill, and the sound of the water hitting the roof lulls her to sleep more often than not.

Kaji takes over most of Asuka's outdoor duties. He finds a nest of quail eggs, he weeds the garden, he harvests the tomatoes, he takes the rifle out to hunt in the downpour but comes up empty-handed. The third day, he returns soaking wet and cold with a bundle of nettles. "For tea," he says. "She could use some." Kaji makes it for her, showing Shinji the edible parts, how to dry it and make a satchet out of leftover cheesecloth. She drinks it without much notice, and her only words are "it's hot."  

Shinji does his best to keep Eve with him, tries to gently ease her in with simple chores, but despite everything, Eve is still a child who wants her mother to tuck her in at night. She slips away from him once, and he finds her with Asuka. Eve softly presses her head to the still slightly swollen bump of her mother's stomach, a feather-light touch, and Asuka runs a hand over Eve's hair but says nothing. A tear runs down Asuka's cheek and Eve does not fight Shinji when he takes her by the hand and leads her away. 

The sixth day of straight rain finds Kaji in the garden, digging trenches around the rows of vegetables, all leading to a ditch four feet wide and four feet deep. The soil is a mix of red and brown, and a normal amount of rain would either absorb or drain out without much issue, but if the rain doesn't stop the plants run the risk of being waterlogged. If that happens, they'll start to wilt or wither. The roots may begin to rot. If that happens, they may starve. Asuka had been adamant about saving seeds and setting aside a portion of every harvest for preservation, but should the garden fail, her little stockpile will only do so much. With any luck, though, the water will run through the trenches and drain into the ditch. 

The ninth day it stops, and the sun comes out, hesitantly, in the early morning. Kaji and Shinji decide to eat dinner outside on the patio even though it's still damp, and even Asuka, evidently sick of the gray skies, joins them too. She even smiles a little. 

The tenth day brings even more sunshine. The breeze brings the smell of gardenias and blood from the amber sea along with it. The boughs of the pine rustle in the wind. Asuka walks the ledge of the patio barefoot and sleeveless, walks the trenches of the garden as the mud squishes out between her toes. Shinji tries (and fails) to keep Eve out of the muck. 

The twelfth day brings still more sun and the sound of birds. There's a woodpecker in the pine now, and a sparrow in the oak, and a warbler hiding somewhere. There's a kingfisher out there. Finches. A starling. There are occasional, infrequent periods of silence, but they are no longer as overwhelming as they once were. Kaji spots a fox on his hunt, and spends some of his evening setting up rabbit snares in various locations before returning home. Shinji opens all the windows and, for once, the house feels like  _home_. 

The thirteenth day brings, at long last, a completely clear sky, and the brightest light yet. Asuka, Shinji, Kaji, and Eve take their breakfast on the porch, enjoying the warmth's gentle touch. Eve scribbles on the ground next to Kaji, Asuka prowls the garden, Shinji tends the pot the porridge was cooked in, and Kaji lies on his back in the grass staring dreamily at the upside-down hill and the sky. 

A figure breaks the skyline, and for a moment he almost dismisses it as part of his daydream. But it is no daydream: it _is_ Misato who stands atop the hill, her white cross gone. She's kept her sense of vigilance through the end and past, unlike him, as she stares down at the four of them with relief flowing from all the marrow in her bones. She raises an arm and shouts, but stays where she is as blurry figures appear behind her, in the edges of his vision, and begin to make their way down the hill. Asuka and Shinji are shouting, Eve adds hers to the clamor, and Misato is still stationary, but Kaji has only one question in his mind. 

 _What took you all so long?_  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm late, but I'm done! Hope you all enjoyed it. Let me know what you think!
> 
> *finger guns*


End file.
